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PS21 Update: Week Ending 10 July

It’s been an eventful week, from the Greeks definitively rejecting the Eurozone bailout conditions to our Monday night event in London on Kidnapping and Ransom to the threat of a Chinese stock market meltdown looming. With that in mind, it seems a very appropriate time for PS21 to be beginning its forays into breaking analysis of developing events.

On Monday, hours after the Greek referendum, we published our first PS21 INSIGHT report: with Greek vote, euro reaches crunch point, with contributions from PS21 executive director Peter Apps as well as Sir Michael Leigh, senior adviser to the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a member of the PS21 International Advisory Group, Giuila Pastorella, Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics and David Lea, western Europe analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks.

See below for our upcoming events for this month and what else we got up to this week.

Our Upcoming Events for July:

London

July 29, Beyond the SDSR. As Britain’s’ Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) gets underway, we have an excellent panel to discuss the defence challenges facing the UK and how they might be addressed. How should the UK handle new challenges such as a resurgent Russia and the prospect of Scottish independence? What do the British people really want? And regardless of the answer, is there any option other than doing less with less?

Chair: Peter Apps: executive director PS21. Panel includes Patrick Bury, former Captain, British Army Royal Irish Regiment and PhD Candidate at the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute, Philip Thicknesse, former head of Futures UK Defence Concepts and Doctrines Centre, Tom Bruxner, British Army officer, Defense Concepts and Doctrine Center, and Josh Arnold-Forster, former special advisor to John Reid MP, Defence Secretary 2005-2006, now strategic advisor at Hanover. RSVP here.

Washington DC

July 14, Making it in DC and beyond. As the intern season in Washington reaches its height, PS21 will host a discussion on what it takes to make it in DC and foreign policy. Moderated by Negar Razavi, social anthropologist and PS21 global gellow, the discussion will include the following panelists: Ali Wyne, member of the adjunct faculty, RAND Corporation, Darya Pilram, field anthropologist/social scientist with US Military and current lecturer at University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Sarah Arkin, senior policy advisor to Congresswoman Debbie Wasseman Schultz and Kathryn Floyd, Professor of International Relations at the College of William & Mary. RSVP here.

July 21, Rebuilding Afghanistan: Transparency and Accountability in America’s Longest War. As the longest running and one of the most expensive wars in U.S. history winds down, PS21 asks: just where did the money go? We are delighted to present a discussion with the man looking into that very question, special inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John F. Spoko. Also on the panel will be Andy Wright, founding editor of Just Security. RSVP here.

July 28, Event with Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer. We are excited to invite you to join us for a conversation with Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group and leading geopolitical thinker. His latest book Superpower examines potential routes forward for the United States in a new and uncertain era. The event will be moderated by Ali Wyne, PS21 global fellow and member of the adjunct staff at the RAND Corporation. To book your spot, RSVP here.

This week at PS21:

On Monday we had a jam-packed event on Kidnap and Ransom and we were privileged to host it with a truly diverse and exceptional panel of speakers. Moderated by Peter Apps, the panelists included Nigel Inkster, former Deputy-Chief Secret Intelligence (MI6), Brittany Damora, Senior Operations Manager, Kidnap and Ransom, Aegis Response and Nigel Brennan, photojournalist and author who was kidnapped in Somalia in 2008 and held hostage for 15 months. To watch the live video of this event, click here. Keep an eye out for the transcription and report on this event, to be published soon.

Emmanuel Akinwotu, PS21 contributor and freelance journalist, looks at the first few weeks of Muhammadu Buhari’s rule as president and considers why it may be a false start for Nigeria’s president.

On Wednesday we published a few insights on what the SCOTUS Jerusalem passport decision means with contributions from a member of our International Advisory Group Dr. Nikolas Gvosdev, Professor of National Security Studies at the US Naval War College, as well as two of our Global Fellows: Milena Rodban, an independent geopolitical risk consultant and Dr. Hayat Alvi, Professor of Middle East Studies at the US Naval War College.

David Murrin is a PS21 Global Fellow and author of Breaking the Code of History, the culmination of decades of personal research across a wide range of disciplines, making a compelling argument that human behaviour is not random, but determined by specific, quantifiable and predictable patterns fueled by our need to survive and prosper. Read the following insightful piece he wrote this week on civil wars of regionalisation and what we can learn from ISIL.